The Art Of Torture Essay -- History Punishment society Essays

The Art of Torture Going by the title of this paper you are probably asking yourself â€Å"How in God’s name can torture be seen as an art, were these people mentally ill?† well it was, but I talk about that later, let me tell you a little about the history of torture. Torture has been around since the times of Ancient Greece and is still around today, usually in the Mafia. Other than the mob, torture isn’t very common in our society. Punishments aren’t near as harsh as they used to be back in medieval times. The only punishments we have now are jails, the punishments there were in medieval times were numerous and downright inhuman. Torture would keep criminal from doing something wrong again, assuming he lived through the torture. The punishments we have today are laughable and dumb. Big deal, you are thrown in prison for a few years, you don’t suffer one bit, but to the inmates, being thrown on a chain gang is so terrible. Being given hundreds of paper cuts and being rolled in salt, now that’s terrible and I’m sure the convict will never break the law again. Places like Singapore still operate like this. It happened to that one teen who decided to spraypaint some cars. He thought he could get away with it and he almost did, but he shortly found out that he had a little pay-back coming to him. The kid was caned, and he hasn’t done anything dumb since. Torture like this works, torture is a way that can really make you have second thoughts before you do anything stupid. Torture was practiced in numerous ancient civilizations. Convicts and war prisoners were put to death by using torture to give them a slow, humiliating death. To some American Indian tribes, it is a custom to torment and burn prisoners. Crucifixion was a popular torture technique in ancient Rome. Rome also used torture to get slaves, criminals, just about anybody, to get them to talk about secretive information. You see in these ancient Roman times, people were given information and were told that they should never tell this information to no one, well the Romans found out about this and this caused a major uprise in the use of torture. In 12th century Europe torture became very widespread like it had just did in Rome. Before Europe began using torture, they relied on a more common judicial type of settlements for crimes, by the 13th century confessions and... ... is when the victim throat is slit open and the tongue of the victim is pulled through the opening. This is one of the few tortures still used today, this technique is usually used by mobs. To conclude this paper on the history, art, and tools of medieval torture, all I can say is that the Middle Ages were a time were crime was not tolerated. Punishments were sever and done to keep a criminal from ever breaking the law again. This use of severe punishments worked unlike the legal system of today where criminals are living a better life in prison than most of the poor are living. Prisoners just go back to what they were doing after they are released from prison, and they usually end up back in prison. Not too many criminals in the Middle Ages were dumb enough to go out and break the law after being tortured, there was no prison were they could spend years in, torture was a fast and effective way of showing a criminal to never ever break the law again. â€Å"Torture, one of the few legal systems that worked†. Works Cited The Gullotine and the Terror, Arasse, Daniel.1987 Penguin Press. The Executioner's Homepage, http://www.luh.K12.ca.us/%7Ebg659808/torture.html